Tiny Times

If you buy the New York Times regularly, you may have noticed something different today. It’s much skinnier. Smaller. Less impressive. But certainly easier to read on the subway or carry around with you. Despite the loss of the big newspaper and 11% of the words, it’s an understandable decision. They need to save money and less paper means less money.

What makes this repugnant is how quickly it followed the raising of the weekday price from $1 to $1.25. Not only are you now getting less content for more money, but the best part about the Times was that you could throw down a dollar bill and take it out of the store. Most of the time, you didn’t even have to wait in line. Now you get saddled with three quarters that you don’t want, plus a tiny newspaper. It’s a sad day.

(Blast from the past: Here is the note from 1984, when the Times reluctantly raised the price of the Sunday paper to… $1.25. How far we’ve come).